Whiteness, Emotionality, and Novice Teachers’ Commitments to Anti-Racist Mathematics Teaching

• In Event: When Numbers Feel White: Emotionality, Microaggressions, and Identity in Math Education

Abstract

Objectives
There is a well-documented, racial mismatch between students of color and a teacher workforce that is largely white (e.g., Chazan, Brantlinger, Clark, & Edwards, 2013). At the same time, research shows that white teachers often struggle to understand the depths of race and racism in the U.S. (Leonardo & Boas, 2021) and especially how it forms racialized mathematics experiences (Martin, 2012). As such, it is imperative to understand early instantiations of whiteness in the context of mathematics teaching. This paper explores the relationship between whiteness, emotionality and teachers’ commitments to anti-racist mathematics pedagogy. I explore how opportunities to grapple with whiteness shape teachers’ contemporaneous and future commitments to helping urban youth – particularly children of color – be included in, and have success with, mathematics.
Theoretical Perspective(s)
As Matias (2014) points out, whiteness and emotionality, as they play out among novice teachers, are manifestations of repressed racial identities and stifled opportunities to confront and process our role in a systemically racist world. Commitments, as I use the term here, refers to the myriad ways in which novice teachers can take action to directly confront children’s racialized mathematics learning experiences. As Mintrop & Ordenes (2017) explain, “[w]e invoke a sense of calling when we refer to those who are highly motivated and committed to work with marginalized students as ‘dream keepers’ (Ladson-Billings, 2022) or ‘social justice leaders’ (Theoharis, 2007). Educators of this type exhibit an unwillingness to abandon their values or goals in the face of numerous distractions, obstacles, or challenges” (p. 4).

Methods/Modes of Inquiry
This conceptual paper draws on 15 years of working with pre-service (PSTs) and in-service teachers. More acutely, I focus on pre-service teachers’ discourses about mathematics and urban youth, with special attention paid to the ways in which whiteness and emotionality manifest in words and actions. Data sources include class discussions and written work in an elementary mathematics methods course. These data are analyzed in congruence with the literature on whiteness and emotionality (e.g., Matias, 2016).

Conclusions
In this paper, I focus on two themes: 1) the ways in which whiteness and emotionality show up in PSTs’ discourses, and 2) PSTs’ relational commitments (or lack of) to confront whiteness as an inhibitor to equitable mathematics teaching and learning. Whereas emotionality shows up in feelings of inadequacy in mathematics, a teacher might commit to investing in and persisting with their own mathematical identity. Novice teachers might also commit themselves to seeing and responding to the ways in which school – especially school mathematics – is designed through lenses honed by bias, deficit orientations, and white sensibilities (Martin, 2015).
Scholarly Significance
This scholarship helps mathematics educators understand the complex dimensions of novice teachers’ understanding of race, racism, and whiteness. Of particular importance is how teachers often unwittingly perpetuate deficit notions of children and communities of color. The upside, however, is that difficult confrontations of whiteness and emotionality can lead to new learning and crucial teacher commitments to self, students, community, and mathematics learning.

Author

• Craig J. Willey, Indiana University - Indianapolis